Questions regarding George DeWolfe in View Camera mag

[Jonathan Brewer]

Jim, I am pretty much in the same boat as you with two small children, I can't do anything as much as I used to do anymore so outside of spending time with my little ones, my time is precious. I love doing straight Photography and digital and any kind of mix of the two, but contrary to what people perceive and/or want to beleive digital is MORE expensive and MUCH MORE time consuming than straight photography(whatever that is).

Consider the whole process you have to go through from day one when you decide to go digital. You gonna need a computer, monitor(and get it calibrated),scanner(scanner software), printer(printer software), CD burner(software), OS, software, surge protection, extended three year warranty(you're crazy if you don't get it).

You're going to have problems problems with some or all of this stuff at some point in time, and everytime you do, you'll have to take the time to trouble shoot/call tech support/break down your system and ship it back to the manufacturer/add and or remove hardware and software that's causing your system to crash. You'll have to take time to watch for and download the updates and patches. No matter what you do, sooner or later you're going to have crashes, breakdowns, downtime, and a great amount of your time is going to be spent trying to figure out if the problem was caused by you OS, your software, your hardware or whatever.

Over the 6 years or so that I've been into digital I honestly think that when I add it all up, waiting to talk to hardware and software manufacturers, that I've spent close to about a week just being on HOLD! It is simply intolerable to me anymore, to sit on hold for 45 minutes for anything and I will no longer do it.

Every time you purchase anything new, your head is going to be stuck in a manual which you've gotta read at the risk of messing up your system.

It going to take some time for you just to get you system to work. Photoshop is going to take you a substantial time to learn, practice, and then master. If you jump into digital this very day, figure on at least 6 months to a year, and probably a lot more time than that to get everything working right and to get proficient in Photoshop before you start kicking out the kind of prints you want.

There is the merry-go-round of software-upgrades-updates-bug fixes-crashes caused by the updates-patches to fix the bugs caused by the updates, and on and on. I have gotten off this merry-go-round and currently will not purchase any more hardware or software. I've got what I've got and that's it.

Digital isn't easy or quick, it's hard to learn and time consuming. I use it because the results are sometimes spectacular but I don't hear a lot of people discussing what happens when things go wrong. When you system is down, your CD burner isn't burning, your printer isn't printing, you're out of business until it's fixed.

My camera equipment almost never breaks down, never malfunctions, and you only have to learn how to use a piece of equipment ONE time. I can go out and photograph any time of the day, and by the way, I need someone to explain to me just how do you do digital in the middle of a power outtage.

As great as digital is, it's delicate, hard to maintain, and time consuming. Straight Photography is quick, simple, and almost always works.

Don't get me wrong, I love digital, I'm just sick of the problems.

[Struan Gray]

I think the major problem with these sorts of discussions is that with the exception of the occasional poster like Dan, nobody says what they mean by "quality".

I think I've said this before, but in terms of their physical qualities, the most beautiful prints I've ever seen were conventional quad-tone lithographs. They had a gorgeous semi-matt surface finish, wonderful microcontrast, and were printed on a paper that simply felt superb between the fingers.

The thing that excites me about inkjet printing is that it offers me the chance to make this sort of print without a lifetime's apprenticeship. The relevance to this thread is that nobody who took the trouble to look would mistake one of those prints for a conventional photograph, and those who prefer the transparent richness and glossy smoothness of, say, ferrotyped fiber prints will never agree with me that the lithographs are 'better'.

High quality work is possible in both digital and analogue, but I agree with those who say that digital is much more expensive for good results. I do a fair bit of image processing in my day job; I roll my own routines, and have access to specialised tools which make photoshop's tonal control look like trying to do brain surgery with a monkey wrench. Despite that, and despite the preference outlined above, I'm still trying to find time away from two seven-month-olds to improve my wet darkroom skills. It's partly cost, partly a love of process, but mostly that I see no reason not to do both, and enjoy both. Once you get past a certain stage of competence, "best" becomes an aesthetic choice, not a technical one.

[chris jordan]

Hey guys, one other comment. Someone here said that getting set up with top-quality quadtone printing equipment is extremely expensive. But, if you add up everything you need, including the computer, it actually ends up costing quite a bit less than a good quality darkroom. And, once you've paid the up-front costs (i.e., bought all the stuff), the prints cost about the same-- a couple of bucks each. A few years ago I was all set to drop about thirty grand on a massive Cibachrome darkroom setup (that cost included plumbing and some other major work on my garage) and then I saw an Epson print! With the amount of money being spent on R&D in the industry right now, our wildest hopes will be sure to come true much faster than we can imagine.

~cj

[Jim Chinn]

Jonathan,

Thanks for pointing out the "darkside" of the technology. Everything you say is true. besides the costs in dollars, one also has to decide the cost in time. I may spend an ungodly amount of time in the darkroom trying to get a print just right, but it is still time spent on the image. There is very little that can go wrong with my current wet set up that can not be quickly replaced or repaired by myself. I can see that for photographers like myself who create images not as a career but as a personal endeavor, on somewhat limited funds and creative scheduling, the technology might sour the great joy I find now.

But on the other hand there is a mountan of ektachrome and kodachrome slide boxes from 35mm sitting around here, maybe i will just get a cheapee scanner, basic photoshop, low end Epson printer. Wait maybe a better printer to start, no better get a high quality scanner, no aughghgh, were is the asprin bottle! anyway thanks for the discussion, my 5 yr old wants me to "help her" make some prints from some 8x10s I made of here most recent block architecture. Good Shooting

[M.]

Great -- if it were just a matter of going into the darkroom and working until the perfect print was achieved. Instead, there's half an hour setting up, just at the time I'm most anxious to get to work, and half an hour cleaning up at 3AM when I'm totally wiped out and need to get to work the next morning. Not to mention the final dry- down which may turn out badly the next day after an all night drying down session, requiring that the whole thing be repeated. None of that with digital, and one can start and stop when it's most convenient. And no problem reproducing a perfect print once you've got it; just "push the button, Max," for as many perfect duplicates as you want. Not another whole night in the darkroom.

[Jim Galli]

' "push the button, Max," for as many perfect duplicates as you want. '

Why would I pay more for these than an Adams print at a poster shop? Prettier? Maybe. 100X prettier? John Q Public may be bamboozled now but how long before they catch on that their $1200.00 original can be duplicated 1200 times in 12000 minutes? Each identical to the other. Where's the intrinsic value in that? Whatever happened to paying your dues? Is it replaced by monthly "pay"ments on your gig-a-dollar anybody could do it set-up?

Just some thoughts....don't get me started. J

[Jim Chinn]

Maybe 40 years from now, if I am still around, I will read an article by a master of digital processes about how he has discovered how a print made on paper coated with silver halide or paltinum and "wet processed" has a depth, lustre, luminosity and feel that can not be achieved through current state of the art methods.

[Michael Chmilar]

This is an interesting discussion. Valid points have been made on both sides.

I don't buy the argument that the labour involved in making a darkroom print increases its intrinsic value. The same argument was made one hundred years ago to denigrate darkroom prints: a painting takes many hours/days/weeks to produce, and results in one original. A photo? A couple of minutes to shoot it; a few hours to print it. Once the printing procedure is established, you can pump out copies at a rapid rate. So, obviously, compared to a painting, a darkroom print is not art and has no intrinsic value.

Another example:

To make a truly valuable photo, you must coat glass plates with photosensitive chemicals, and then expose them. To use something like mass-produced film "cheapens" the process and makes the resulting print worthless. Likewise, purchasing mass-produced photographic paper is cheating.

If the creation of art and intrinsic value requires machismo, pain, and suffering, then you should go to the extreme. Anything else is cheating.

Otherwise, where do you draw the line?

[Jim Galli]

If you'll permit me, I'll draw on your analogy of painter vs photographer 100 years ago Mr. Chmilar. Eventually we discovered that these are two very different art forms that could hang on a gallery wall comfortably but mutually exclusive of each other. My bride walks in and looks at the paintings, perhaps is even moved by one. I walk in and look at the photography and am or/not moved by them.

Piezography is more an extension of the graphic arts/ printing medium than it is of photography. You could use the same tools and talents to perfectly reproduce either the paintings or the photographs. Perfect reproductions are nice, (and what most of us can afford,) but are they art?

[M.]

I was refering to digital printing from the viewpoint of the photographer, not the collector. I notice that Matisse and Picasso lithographs, (for which they didn't do the work themselves), don't go cheap.